Inventing the Abbotts
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Movie Reviews of Inventing the Abbotts
Movie Review: Romantic but hard
Summary: 4 Stars
This is another good movie of Liv Tyler just like her 'Stealing Beauty'. The two brothers and the three sisters performed a romantic but rough love story happened in 1960s. You can see the bitter of growth, regret of losing, sweet of love, value of brotherliness... As a whole, it is a movie of sensation.Movie Review: It was not bad.
Summary: 4 Stars
I liked it. Very emotional. I love Joaquin and I do think Jennifer is a great actress. Very great look at life in that era.Movie Review: Inventing The Abbotts
Summary: 4 Stars
Some parts of the movie drags and some of the lines are a bit verbose but overall enjoyable. H SewellMovie Review: Things just get dragged out way too slowly in this one
Summary: 3 Stars
Every once in a while there is a rude reminder that where I live is, relatively speaking, in the backwaters of the country. In 1997 I must have seen the trailer for "Inventing the Abbotts" a half-dozen times, but the film never came here, so I never had to actually decide if I would pay money to see it in a movie theater or not, although clearly I took my time in getting around to finally watching it. Of course, now the cast of "Inventing the Abbotts" is much more recognizable than it was back then, with Jennifer Connolly being an Oscar winner, Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar nominee, Billy Crudup having traded Penny Lane for a case of beer, and Liv Tyler becoming mortal to marry the King of Gondor. But it is not that difficult to think back to when they were relatively known faces.The greatest strength of this film is the original score by Michael Kamen, which consistently gave scenes and moments of this film a power that was beyond what the script and the actors were providing. The story is about the Abbotts, a rich family in the 1950s living in a small Illinois town with three daughters, and the Holts brothers, Doug (Phoenix" and J.C. (Crudup). The former is the narrator of the tale, while the later is "addicted" to the Abbotts, attempting to blot out a grievance against the family by seducing the daughters. Doug is more fascinated with J.C.'s story than with his own, but it is Doug that is of more interest to us, especially with his affection for young Pamela Abbott (Tyler), which is momentarily forgotten for a while by his lust for Eleanor (Connelly).
Basically this is a film that gives every indication that Doug and Pamela should end up together and be allowed to live as happily every after as their tortured families and histories might allow, but J.C. and his obsession keeps getting in the way. Meanwhile some of the secrets hidden by each family are doled out bit by bit, completing the picture of the animosity that exists between the Abbotts and the Holts. Lloyd Abbott (Will Patton) knows all about marrying into a rich family, and he is not going to allow that to happen with his daughters, but he is just one of several roadblocks that stands between any of these characters and some home of happiness.
One thing for sure is that "Inventing the Abbotts" is set in a slower time. The pacing of the film is slow, the dialogue is spoken in slow and measured terms, the narration is redundant repetitive, and you become convinced we are never going to get to where the film should end because it will slowly grind to a complete halt. If it were not for our affection towards Pamela, Kathy Baker's performance as the boy's mom, and Kamen's score, I might have given up on this film, especially when Eleanor was shipped away by her father as soon as she had given the story some energy. But by that time we learn that J.C. has committed the greatest possible sin against his brother, I was at least ticked off enough to stay around for the end. The fault for this lies with director Pat O'Connor, especially since he showed in his previous effort, "Circle of Friends," that he can breath live into a story. However, he failed to do that here.
Movie Review: Once Eleanor leaves...
Summary: 3 Stars
This movie has so much potential and to tell you the truth when it's on T.v or when I feel like watching something familiar it is still something I watch. The problem is that with so much potential the story fails. The story loses focus as to what the brothers wanted in the first place, especially JC played by Billy Crudup. All of the actors are great, but Jennifer Connelly made the movies worth watching she draws the audience with her mishievous and tempetous Eleanor. If she was ever cast as a villain she would be the pitch perfect but so far in her career this is as close as she gets to playing bad and she does with such a subtle hint of seduction that as an audience member it is mindboggling when the writer director whoever decided to yank her character 30 minutes in. A shame a true shame.
What we are left with is a skeleton of a movie till the end when Joaquin Phoenix's character Doug returns to his primary motivation and the story gets back on track.
This movie isn't bad. IT is entertaining and watchable but is is so disappointing to think what could have been/\.